Discrimination by another name

There is a telling paragraph in the U.S. District Court opinion last year that found Texas deliberately discriminated against minorities in redistricting.

“In the last four decades, Texas has found itself in court every redistricting cycle, and each time it has lost.”

Such serial stubbornness is a sign of many things, but not redemption. Texas is not reformed of its discriminatory past. It has merely rebranded — in Coca-Cola Classic fashion. Funny, tastes just like the old discrimination.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case whose outcome will have a profound effect on whether Texas and other states and political jurisdictions with histories of voter discrimination get away with this flim-flam.

That case is Shelby County, Alabama vs. Eric H. Holder, determining whether the federal government, through Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, can continue to stop discrimination in these “covered” jurisdictions before it takes effect. It requires pre-clearance of new election laws.

Alabama and Texas essentially argue that the states and the nation are post-racial. And, in citing the court's and federal government's disapproval of its voter ID law, Texas also uses the others-get-to-do-it (Indiana, in this case) argument.

But the problem is that how Texas does it makes it an over-achieving outlier even among other bad actors.

The U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, in denying Texas redistricting pre-clearance under Section 5, said of Texas's state House maps: “This testimony is concerning because it shows a deliberate race-conscious method to manipulate not simply the Democratic vote but, more specifically, the Hispanic vote.”

Just to refresh memories, the 2010 Census revealed that minorities accounted for about 90 percent — Latinos alone, 65 percent — of the growth that netted Texas four new congressional districts. Yet the state did not draw maps representative of the growth. The district court rejected the 2012 maps, a federal court in San Antonio providing interim maps.

And here's what a group of political scientists and law professors wrote in a brief about “covered” states such as Texas:

“... states that are fully covered by Section 5 are more than twice as likely as non-covered states to adopt policies that make voting more difficult for voters.”

Texas notes that the Supreme Court turned back challenges to Indiana's voter ID law, “similar,” it says, to Texas' law.

Not so similar, actually. The court that rejected Texas' voter ID law said that Texas' law was more restrictive than either Indiana's or Georgia's. Effects fall disproportionately on low-income voters of color unable to travel long Texas distances to get state IDs and less inclined or able to pay the money for the IDs needed to get the state IDs.

To read a list of Section 5 cases is to read of Texas and its jurisdictions figuring prominently as major offenders. And the bad ol' days of voter discrimination? They occurred just last year, with that D.C. court ruling against Texas in redistricting and voter ID.

Had there been no Section 5, the state's discriminatory maps would have been in force for elections last year and voters would have had to endure the gantlet of voter ID.

Texas, in urging the high court to eliminate Section 5, is essentially saying that it would prefer no one looking when it does anew what it has a sordid history of doing.

This high court might just let it. And it will still be discrimination by some other name.